Should I consider to use JMS in my case?

Question

I'm not very familiar with JMS so, I can't understand whether I should consider it to use in my case.

I have 3 servers (running on tomcat) which are going to send some notifications to another server (call it PrincipalServer) when some event occured on them. The PrincipalServer is running on tomcat too. When the notifications from one of those 3 servers reach the PrincipalServer it need to handle it in some way, depending on the message (For instance, persist some data in a database). Approximately, the rate of the notification would be 500k-1M a day.

So, should I consider some JMS implementation like ActiveMQ?

Answer 1

It depends on a number of factors, but it may provide a benefit in your case. The main benefit provided by JMS is the ability to reliably queue work that can be done later. There are three key reasons in my mind for using JMS over a web service, rest or ejb call. These are:

1. The client should return prior to this work being processed. If this work has to be done before returning to the client then don't use JMS, trying to build a synchronous invoke model over JMS while possible is choosing a hammer when you have a screw.
2. The clients may process bursts of work that the back end can't keep up with. In this case JMS will store the messages until the back end can process the work. Note that you still need to average the number of messages on the Queue to be zero, you can't add messages forever.
3. The back end may go down independently of the front end. In this case the JMS provider will store the messages until the backend comes back up to process the work.